Frege, famously, held that there is a close connection between our concept of cardinal number and the notion of one-one correspondence, a connection enshrined in Hume's Principle. Husserl, and later Parsons, objected that there is no such close connection, that our most primitive conception of cardinality arises from our grasp of the practice of counting. Some empirical work on children's development of a concept of number has sometimes been thought to point in the same direction. I argue, however, that Frege was close to right, that our concept of cardinal number is closely connected with a notion like that of one-one correspondence, a more primitive notion we might call just as many.

This paper concerns the epistemic status of "Hume's principle"--the assertion that for any concepts $F$ and $G$, the number of $F$s is the same as the number of $G$s just in case the $F$s and the $G$s are in one-one correspondence. I oppose the view that Hume's principle is a stipulation governing the introduction of a new concept with the thesis that it represents the correct analysis of a concept in use. Frege's derivation of the basic laws of arithmetic from Hume's principle shows our pure arithmetical knowledge to arise out of the most common everyday applications we make of the numbers. The analysis of arithmetical knowledge in terms of Hume's principle ties our conception of number to the interconnections of which our concepts of divided reference are capable; in so doing, it locates the origin of our conception of number in the structure of our conceptual framework.

This essay addresses the question of the effect of Russell's paradox on Frege's distinctive brand of arithmetical realism. It is argued that the effect is not just to undermine Frege's specific account of numbers as extensions (courses of value) but more importantly to undermine his general means of explaining the object-directedness of arithmetical discourse. It is argued that contemporary neo-Fregean attempts to revive that explanation do not successfully avoid the central problem brought to light by the paradox. Along the way, it is argued that the need to fend off an eliminative construal of arithmetic can help explain the so-called Caesar problem in the Grundlagen, and that the "syntactic priority thesis" is insufficient to establish the claim that numbers are objects.

In this paper, we explore Fregean metatheory, what Frege called the New Science. The New Science arises in the context of Frege's debate with Hilbert over independence proofs in geometry and we begin by considering their dispute. We propose that Frege's critique rests on his view that language is a set of propositions, each immutably equipped with a truth value (as determined by the thought it expresses), so to Frege it was inconceivable that axioms could even be considered to be other than true. Because of his adherence to this view, Frege was precluded from the sort of metatheoretical considerations that were available to Hilbert; but from this, we shall argue, it does not follow that Frege was blocked from metatheory in toto. Indeed, Frege suggests in Die Grundlagen der Geometrie a metatheoretical method for establishing independence proofs in the context of the New Science. Frege had reservations about the method, however, primarily because of the apparent need to stipulate the logical terms, those terms that must be held invariant to obtain such proofs. We argue that Frege's skepticism on this score is not warranted, by showing that within the New Science a characterization of logical truth and logical constant can be obtained by a suitable adaptation of the permutation argument Frege employs in indicating how to prove independence. This establishes a foundation for Frege's metatheoretical method of which he himself was unsure, and allows us to obtain a clearer understanding of Frege's conception of logic, especially in relation to contemporary conceptions.

It is widely believed that some puzzling and provocative remarks that Frege makes in his late writings indicate he rejected independence arguments in geometry, particularly arguments for the independence of the parallels axiom. I show that this is mistaken: Frege distinguished two approaches to independence arguments and his puzzling remarks apply only to one of them. Not only did Frege not reject independence arguments across the board, but also he had an interesting positive proposal about the logical structure of correct independence arguments, deriving from the geometrical principle of duality and the associated idea of substitution invariance. The discussion also serves as a useful focal point for independently interesting details of Frege's mathematical environment. This feeds into a currently active scholarly debate because Frege's supposed attitude to independence arguments has been taken to support a widely accepted thesis (proposed by Ricketts among others) concerning Frege's attitude toward metatheory in general. I show that this thesis gains no support from Frege's puzzling remarks about independence arguments.